To Know Foreverness
by storyless
Summary: Wakka reflects on his life with Lulu and the life they've built.


  
"Pops?" Vidina's lanky form stooped under the entrance flap. "You okay? The summoner's here and–" 

"Vidina." Wakka leaned around the corner, tufts of white hair twitching slightly in the crossdraft, his otherwise bald crown glistening with the Besaid summer. His voice sounded tired. "Just give us –give mea few more minutes, ya?"

Vidina lingered, dangling mourning beads swinging from his neck. It had been few more minutes for hours. _Why you gotta do this_, he wanted to yell. _You're not the only one who– _but he didn't. There was no more room for anger in the crowded tent. He pursed his lips and sighed through his nose. "A-alright. I'll let them know."

The heavy fabric swung for a moment before it settled shut, drawing a thin orange line of sunset across the bed. It fell diagonally across her face, and the sapphire over her left eye shone like the stare of a night animal. It sickened him a little. Wakka didn't like the gaudiness of the new ceremony. He didn't understand it much, either. The sending jewels just dropped to the ground after the ritual; the mourning beads just hung in the closet. He missed the simple Yevonite sendings and he wished he could give her what they knew, what they grew up with. Vidina wouldn't have any of that, of course. _It'd look weird,_ he'd said. _We'd have nothing to give our guests._ This new generation loved their _things_. They didn't have any worries about Sin; they got their stuff and they kept it. Wedding ribbons and mourning beads and birthing pendants and gifts at the new year. Too much. He shook his head. "These kids aren't like us, Lu."

---

"Leave me alone!" She looks at him with dried vinegar eyes – her face red, frizzy bits of hair sticking to her forehead. "Just get away from me." She hated this stupid island and feels so worn out from shrieking and weeping and being so _unlike_ everyone else.

But he doesn't _just get away_ from her; he stays there with his ginger plume and coppery skin and watches her like the sun. "I don't get you, Lu."

She stands up; she's taller than him this year. "Nobody here does, you–"

"I don't get much, Lu. I don't get why I can throw a ball better than memorize potion recipes, even when I stay up all night reading them over and over again. I don't get why I love the ocean so much, how I pretty much feel happier at the beach than anywhere else. And," suddenly, his tongue is dry and this throat is knotted, "I don't get how come Chappu does things like this to girls he likes. Guess I'm pretty stupid." With that, he tosses a small stuffed moogle at her feet.

She looks at him like she'd just been bitten by a snake, eyes wide and clumsily painted lips parted and trembling.

"I'll show you where he hid the rest of them, if you want." He leads the way through the jungle undergrowth with his oddly heavy-footed agility. She follows him.

---

He touched her hair, now unbraided and moon-silver. It caught on the rough of his calloused fingertips. He wanted to brush the curtain of hair aside and kiss the closed lid behind it. He always wanted to do that, but every time he'd reach up to try, she'd slap his hand away.

He used to wake before her in the morning, waiting for her to open her eyes, feeling a quiet, private triumph every time he saw her in the morning –unguarded, unpreened and intimate. She was more real in the morning, seemed to him. She was more _Lu_.

She would never slap his hand away again and he would never wake up beside her again.

She'd had such beautiful eyes. No– she still had beautiful eyes.

---

A hundred Besaidians stiffen and turn their heads from their weaving, a thousand birds burst from the groves, and Lulu charges out of the temple, her hard soled shoes clacking fiercely on the marble behind her.

Wakka blinks at the smoking barrel, his head lowered between his tensed shoulders. "Oh," Yuna says sheepishly. "So that's why Rikku gave me the silencer."

"What in the name of all that is holy–?" Lulu stops suddenly, braids swinging dramatically from her shoulders, glaring at the horrible machina in the High Summoner's hand. "Is that a _gun_?"

Yuna blushes, lowering the weapon to her side.

"First you toss aside your summoner's robes, now this? Yuna, what are you doing?"

Yuna straightens and sticks out her chin. Still, she lowers her eyes to speak. "I–"

"What would Lord Braska– what would your _father_ think?"

A pause falls between them, shimmering and lingering and opaque.

"I think he would be proud." She speaks briskly, meting out the words in a clipped, soft canter. "I'm being a hero, Lulu."

"Yuna. We did what we did so they wouldn't need any more heroes. People died so we could do what we did. Auron. Your father. Tid–"

As Lulu speaks, Yuna stands tiptoe and lays a timid, platonic kiss on Wakka's cheek. For a moment her face is close enough for him to see tears in her eyes. Close enough to hear her breathless whisper. "You'll know where I'll be." She turns on her heel and runs, her long wrapped plait trailing behind her.

"Where is she–?"

"Dunno if it's our business, Lu. Besides, I think it kinda suits her."

"_You too_?"

In one fluid motion, he shrugs his shoulders and scratches his bare chest. "I wasn't so sure, at first. But I haven't seen her this happy since–"

"Since Spira needed heroes?"

"Still think they do." He puts his hand on her white shoulder and traces the grace of her collarbone with his thick thumb. "At least in here." He taps her left breast gently, above her heart. He kisses her, suddenly and softly, before he walks away, arms swinging. He gets some distance away before he shouts over his shoulders. "Y'know, I still think we're heroes..."

Lulu watches him leave, brow furrowed and head cocked. She surprises herself when she realizes he's right.

----

No woman in all of Spira was prettier than this lady. Every out-of-place hair, every wrinkle and scar of aging and good times and hard times. All of it. He wanted to kiss her so badly then. But if he did that her lips would be cold and that's not what–

Her lipstick's not on right, he realizes. _They didn't put her lipstick on right._

And with that, there's a lurch.

Like he's been riding in one of them Al Bhed sleds and somebody's put the brakes down too hard and his body is thrown against the restraints and he almost falls off, almost tumbles face first. But he stays on, somehow.

She's not coming back.

She's not gonna linger, unsent, until he's used to it or ready to join her.

He'd known she was dying for weeks. And he'd known she was dead for hours. In his head, he'd he'd gotten used to knowing it.

But it took that moment to know it with his heart.

It was forever.

---

Lulu is lying on her side in the grass, her head propped up on her hand.

She's humming and languidly bobbing a buttercup before Vidina's face, who scrunches his nose and squeals with babyish giggles. Wakka comes over the knoll, grinning wearily. He's been out all afternoon. He drops the blitzball until it rolls to a gentle stop at her elbow. She looks up, blinking into the sunlight. "Your son likes flowers." She grins.

He lands solidly beside her, cross-legged and stretching his arms. "Maybe our son just wants to impress his Mama." He leans over to kiss her forehead then sits back, hoisting Vidina onto his knee.

"Mmm." She sighs happily, her face upturned full to the sun.

"You look like you could stay here forever."

Eyes still closed, lips still smiling, she turns to him. "You would know. You taught me all about forever."

"Huh?"

Suddenly she's up and sitting opposite him, eyes wide and full of wisdom. Vidina looks up at his mother, chortling and drooling, and wraps his small hand around her index finger. She looks down at their son and back at Wakka. "_This_."

---

"Pops...?"

"Ya."

"Are you ready–"

"Let 'em in."

Wakka felt a little like his heart was opening and despite himself, he cried.

Friends and family and lifelong neighbors ambled through the little hut, pausing at Lulu's prone body to lay offerings of flowers or to perform the gesture of peace, already long-divorced from its Yevonite connotation. He nodded through their sympathy, half-aware of the awkward hugs and shoulder pats.

As for them, they saw the shaking shoulders and they saw the tracks of tears. They saw the legends felled by age and grief. And they saw the son, blinking back tears as he held his feeble, worn-out father.

They couldn't see the hearts brimming with love and joy and memories and pride, expanding infinitely for all good things that make a life.

In every breath they draw, there is a thankfulness.

And between them all, a foreverness they taught each other to know.


End file.
